When it comes to mixing hard liquor with feminine style, few do it better than Katie Nelson, bartender at the Columbia Room in DC’s Mount Vernon Square neighborhood. We checked in with Nelson about her favorite drink, thoughts on vodka, and morning-after pick-me-ups.

Always on the home bar: Plymouth
gin.

Cocktail to make at home: Dark and Stormy with
Gosling’s ginger beer or Blenheim ginger ale and a dark rum such as
Myers’s.

Cocktail to impress guests: Gin martini. “I
pinch the lemon peel to distribute the oils and then toss it.”

First drink: Whiskey sour.

Liqueur: Chartreuse Green.

Bitters: Peychaud’s.

Brand of tonic: Fever-Tree.

Vodka is . . . : “Tasteless, which can be
useful.”

Mixer: Blenheim ginger ale; Canada Dry
bitter-lemon soda.

Special-occasion drink: Champagne from small
growers like Pierre Gimonnet and Henriot.

Secret ingredient: Vinegar, such as Maple
Vinegar from Kalustyan’s in New York. “I like using it in shrubs or in a
version of a Manhattan. Its gives a brightness and tanginess to the
drink.”

Banned from the bar: Sour mix.

Day drink: Chilled manzanilla
sherry.

Bottled water: Apollinaris.

Guilty pleasure: Starbucks vanilla
latte.

Hangover remedy: Pedialyte.

I wish I could sip my way through:Chicago.

Place to drink on a day off: Estadio in DC’s
Logan Circle; the Tabard Inn in DC’s Dupont Circle.

Place to eat on a day off: Room 11 in DC’s
Columbia Heights.

Recently splurged on: Bittercube blackstrap
bitters.

On the wish list: Cherry-red
Vespa.

Can’t live without: MAC Lipglass.

Work outfit: Cocktail dresses. “My favorite is
a dark-green wrap dress from Meeps on DC’s 18th Street in Adams Morgan
that I can wear a zillion different ways.”

Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.